(I am so grateful to Erin (Tetting) Middleton, a former student of mine and now a music teacher for KUSD, who made this recording of Saturday night’s performance.)
It began sometime last summer when Polly Amborn, the choral director at Tremper High School (and my sister-in-law), shared some amazing news with me: that the choral directors in the Kenosha Unified School District were inviting me – if I was interested and willing – to compose a piece that would serve as the grand finale for the school district’s 2016 Choral Festival – the 50th anniversary fest. It was an astounding invitation to receive- and it took about two seconds of deliberation before I said one of the most enthusiastic yes’s I have ever given to an invitation. It meant that something I wrote would be sung by over 1100 young singers …. essentially all of the high school and middle school singers in Kenosha, plus a group of outstanding elementary students. I could not have felt more honored if they had bestowed on me the Nobel Peace Prize.
And then at some point, it started to dawn on me – I didn’t get to put “was asked to compose a piece for the 50th KUSD Choral Fest” on my resume until Id actually create something – and I had to hope that it would be something that the students would like …. and their teachers …. and the audience. I was also anxious to write something that wouldn’t seem completely derivative and juvenile, like dozens of other “Isn’t Music Wonderful?!?!” rah-rah songs – but what could I think of to say that would be fresh both in its lyrics and music? At that point, I almost regretted how quickly I had said Yes to such an intimidating challenge. What was I thinking?!?!?!? How could I accept into such a high-stakes assignment without at least a moment of serious consideration?!?!?!?
I can remember many moments on the big trip Kathy and I took to Yellowstone a couple of weeks later when I would look at all of the splendor surrounding us on every side and hoping that magnificent music – or profound lyrics – or both – would just emerge as if by magic. But all of that glorious beauty did not stir even one single idea into being; it’s almost as though my imagination sort of withered before such awe-inspiring beauty. And actually, that’s almost always the way it’s been. Beautiful sunsets do not inspire me to write beautiful music. It’s as though it’s two completely different kinds of beauty that have almost nothing to do with each other. Actually, that’s not really true- because one of our favorite things to do on our trip when we were driving through especially magnificent places was to put on the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s thundering arrangement of “America the Beautiful” and crank it to full volume (or close to it) or other stirring music that served as the perfect soundtrack (like Robert Farnon’s “Captain Horatio Hornblower” or Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man.”) Those incredible mountains called for music- but somehow not for music from me. Maybe I was just too agog in wonder to form a coherent musical thought of my own. All I know is that when we returned from our wonderful trip, I was not one inch closer to writing my Choral Fest piece.
What finally got me rolling – and it wasn’t until early fall, after I was done with my faculty voice recital – was when I got up bright up and early one morning (about an hour earlier than normal) and made my way to Carthage’s recital hall. I left all of the lights off except for one or two spotlights on the stage – sat down at that beautiful Yamaha grand piano (my favorite piano on campus, at least in terms of comfort level) – and just started playing whatever came into my mind – with no particular intention. In a sense, it was just the opposite of what I had tried to do this summer by drawing inspiration from what was around me. In that darkened room – which is actually a very plain, ordinary room – all I had was the piano I was playing and my own imagination. And almost immediately, these words came flooding over me, with a melody to match:
I cannot imagine my life without a song… the power of music in the face of every wrong ….
to comfort, to gladden, to uplift and inspire. To awaken within us an unquenchable fire!
To be all that we can be. To imagine new heavens on earth …. unknown possibilities!
I liked it – but then I started thinking about the task of trying to help a non-singer to understand how special singing is to a singer. What is it like? I played the melody again and realized that I had borrowed a phrase or two from a much earlier song of mine called “God gives me Wings.” And thinking of that song- and of the photograph of a seagull which adorned the cover of my CD – made me realize that I could liken the beauty of song with the beauty of the sky:
I cannot imagine the earth without the sky …. a boundless heaven where you and I can fly!
No boundaries … no borders … no barriers there! Just a limitless blue – an ocean of air
where we can fly! Where we can soar! Where no matter how far we go, there is always something more!
And then these words came to me to tie it up:
This is why we breathe! This is why we sing!
I liked it- and I liked the music. But then I realized that I had written something that sounded like a solo song, not like a choral piece meant to be sung by more than a thousand young people. And it was also a soft, flowing, gentle piece – and it didn’t seem like it would perfectly befit such a grand occasion. But when I tried to change the music into something sturdier and more emphatic, it felt strange and forced and artificial. I liked this exactly as it was- but the piece needed to go someplace else from there.
I didn’t have any inkling of that “someplace else” until mid-November when a middle school choir director in the district named Beth Herrendeen Smith posted on Facebook a sampling of some of the answers that her students gave to the question “Why Do We Sing?” She was blown away by how profound and articulate they were- and so was I! When I saw Beth a couple of days later at Lorelai’s birthday party, I took her aside and asked if she would be willing to share more of what her students had written- in the hopes that their words might serve as the basis for my Choral Fest piece. Needless to say, she was delighted by what I was thinking about and within a day she had emailed me a photo of the poster on which the students had written their answers to Why We Sing:
And just like that, Part Two of the anthem was underway. Some of these answers ended up pretty much verbatim in the lyrics- while others needed to be tweaked . Still others may not have ended up in the lyrics as such, but they served as a more general inspiration to me by getting me thinking about the purpose of singing in new ways. Several of them, in fact, that are not in the song still haunt me to this very day: We sing ‘to express what’s in your heart – ‘to remember the ones we’ve lost’ – ‘to make others feel’ – ‘to turn a bad day around.’ The answers were all over the map, and of course even all of their answers still didn’t cover all the ways in which singing makes such a difference in our lives and in our world. And I suppose that very ‘limitlessness’ of singing is what prompted the refrain:
There is always one more reason to sing!
Always one more reason to raise our voice!
To break our silence, rise up, and rejoice!
There is always, always one more reason to sing!
As for the verses, they scarcely scratch the surface – but I tried to make them words that would resonate with the students on a deeply personal level:
- We sing to remember. We sing to forget.
We sing in our sorrow and in our regret.
We sing when we’re frightened, to banish our fear!
We sing in the morning, and we sing when night draws near. And there’s always one more reason…..
2) We sing when we’re certain …. and when we don’t know.
We sing to receive …. and to give and let go.
We sing in our weakness. We sing to be strong.
We sing to awaken the people with our song! And there’s always one more reason to sing …..
Bridge: When words alone are not enough
to express our joy, our grief, and love ….
3) We sing when we’re lonely, when we need a friend…
to be part of a family … to learn how to blend.
We sing to be cherished, to truly belong.
We sing to be part of an amazing, mighty song. And there’s always one more reason to sing ….
Once the words were written, it was time to get some music written. For awhile, I found myself frozen because I was trying to figure out how to write music that would sound good when sung by a thousand people. It was a concept I could scarcely wrap my head around. I also struggled with writing something that would be sufficiently grand yet would be fun for the students to sing. And I wondered about how hard to make the music because of all of the middle schoolers who would be singing. I chased my tail for a few days before I finally decided that the only thing I could do is try to write a piece that I thought Polly’s choir at Tremper would enjoy – and would sound good singing. That was something I knew how to do! Once I sorted that out, my creative juices were finally able to flow.
Only as I was finishing up did I remember something important: early on in the process, I asked the fine arts coordinator of KUSD, Scott Plank, to send me (if he could find it) the program from the very first KUSD Choral Festival from 1966. I wasn’t sure but I thought it might be cool to maybe quote something from one of those pieces sung on that very first program. As it turns out, I knew several of the pieces that were sung on that occasion, but the one that really grabbed hold of me was “Cry Out and Shout” by Knut Nystedt, which is one of the pieces I did with the Carthage Choir during my short time as their interim director. And it was the fanfare-like opening to his piece that provided me with the perfect closing phrase for mine. (In my introductory remarks at Saturday night’s concert, I said that the Nystedt quote was dedicated not just to the singers on that first Fest concert fifty years ago, but to the many thousands of people who have been part of this amazing tradition in subsequent years.)
I got all of the lyrics written just in time for my first face-to-face meeting with Scott Plank on Friday, December 18th to share with him what I had in mind. I was excited by what I had come up with but could only hope that he would share my excitement and have at least a glimmer of what I had in mind. (What made it tricky is that our meeting was at the Common Grounds coffee cafe shop- not someplace where I could play the piece and sing it for him. All I could do was show him the lyrics and explain what I had in mind. Fortunately, he was extremely enthusiastic- beyond my highest hopes- which meant that it was time for me to sit down and get the piece written down in finished form so that Paul Marchese, a former student of mine, could take my chicken scratched manuscript and transform it into a perfectly legible printed score- which he did, thanks to his Sibelius program. And not long after that, another friend- Derek Machan- was able to fashion a piano accompaniment. And with scarcely a day to spare, Scott had the music in his hands by the mid-January deadline we had agreed upon. From there, it was up to the choral directors across the district to take the score, make sense of it, and then teach it to their students.
I know very little about what happened between then and now. All I know is that when I walked into last Thursday night’s music rehearsal, the assembled students sang the piece with energy and confidence- and by memory! And for as exciting as Saturday morning’s dress rehearsal was, the Saturday night performance was even more exciting and impressive. As I think back on the weekend, one of the things I’m most struck by is how the experience was one of the most glorious Cloud Nine moments of my entire life- but also an incredibly humbling experience. To think that all of these students – and their choir directors – worked so hard to learn my piece- and to polish and perfect it – was astonishing to me. Moreover, I was so blessed to have a master conductor like Dr. Brad Holmes on the podium to lead the piece with such care and sensitivity.
And amongst that enormous throng of singers were Colin and Daniel and Austin and Noah and Christopher and Andrew and Nicholas …. private voice students of mine who mean the world to me …. as well as my precious niece, Lorelai, who was a proud member of the elementary honors choir. But mostly, it was a vast throng of complete strangers to me – and to a large extent strangers to one another. But in that moment, we were somehow comrades…. and even friends.
We sing to be cherished – to truly belong. We sing to be part of an amazing, mighty song.
Such is the amazing miracle of Singing.
